Operation

by Barbara Bretton

  “Then do it now.”

  The thought of knowing the truth was more than she could handle. “I can’t do it now. You’re supposed to run the test in the morning.”

  “That’s not what it says on the box.”

  He was right. The words Use Any Time of Day were written across the front of the package in bold letters.

  “All right,” she said. “I’ll do it and then we won’t have to have this conversation again as long as we live.”

  She started toward the powder room with him right behind her.

  “Don’t even think it,” she said from the bathroom doorway. “You’re not coming in here with me.”

  “I want to watch when you run the test”

  “Wait out there,” she ordered. “This is a one-woman operation.”

  A few minutes later she returned with a specimen cup of urine.

  “What happens next?” he asked.

  She spread the instructions on the kitchen counter. “I put five drops of urine in that little well then wait three minutes.”

  “Only three minutes?”

  “That’s what it says.” It hardly seemed long enough for something so momentous. “Either a plus sign or a minus sign will appear in this window.” She met his eyes. “And then we’ll know.”

  “Then get on with it, lassie.”

  She carefully squeezed five drops into the well and set her timer. The instructions said it had to be exactly five drops or the test results could be badly skewed. She sat at the kitchen table. Duncan sat opposite her. Neither one said a word as the seconds ticked by silently.

  Ding. Ding. Ding.

  Her breath caught. She pushed back her chair and stood up. “This is it,” she announced. One of the least necessary observations she’d ever made.

  “Aye,” he said. “This is it.”

  She looked at the white plastic receptacle. A big red plus sign looked up at her. She closed her eyes then looked again. The big red plus sign was still there. She felt the way she had right after the plane crash, numb, elated, terrified, shell-shocked—all those things at the same time.

  But mostly she felt scared.

  “I’m pregnant,” she said, as tears spilled down her cheeks. “Oh, God.” She leaned against the wall as the room seemed to spin around her. “What am I going to do?”

  Duncan met her eyes. “There is only one thing you can do,” he said. “You’re going to marry me.”

  “That’s not funny.”

  “It wasn’t meant to be.”

  Her head felt as if it was filled with helium. Any second it would separate from her body and float off. She closed her eyes and pulled in a shaky breath. He was saying something, but she couldn’t make out the words. Slowly she began to slide to the floor. Duncan caught her before she fell.

  “Stop doing that,” she murmured, letting her head drop onto his shoulder.

  “Doing what, lassie?”

  “Rescuing me. I don’t need your help. Maybe I’d like falling down. You never give me the chance to find out”

  “Aye,” Duncan said as he carried her into the front room. “I can see that.”

  For the second time that night, he placed her on a sofa then went to the kitchen to fetch her a glass of water.

  “Thank you,” she said after taking a sip. “I don’t know what’s wrong—” She stopped, and a bitter laugh mingled with her tears. “Wait a minute, I do know what’s wrong, don’t I?” She buried her face in her hands and started to cry.

  Duncan had never felt more useless in his life. She cried as if her heart was breaking, wrenching sobs that made his gut ache. He didn’t know why he’d said what he had. A bad marriage was a prison unlike no other.

  Bloody hell, he still hadn’t quite comprehended the fact that she was pregnant with his child. Somewhere in his mix of confusion and anger, there was beginning in his marrow a fierce sense of elation. He remembered the last time and how it had ended. The one thing he knew, the only thing, was that this time would be different if he had to move heaven and earth to guarantee it.

  “Stop staring at me,” she snapped between sobs. “Why don’t you just call a cab and go back to Scotland where you belong?”

  “I can’t go now and leave you like this.”

  “Why not?” she demanded. “If you hadn’t popped up here unexpectedly, you wouldn’t even know.”

  “But I do know, and that makes all the difference.”

  She swatted at his arm with her left hand. “Can’t you take a hint? I don’t want you here, Duncan Stewart. I don’t want you in my house.”

  “You shouldn’t be alone right now.”

  “Why should now be any different?” Edgy laughter cut through her tears. “I’ve always been alone.”

  Oh, God, Sam thought. Where on earth had that come from? She’d read about wildly escalating estrogen levels that made pregnant women highly emotional, but she’d never read about the self-pity hormone kicking in. She’d never be able to look him in the face again.

  Once again Duncan chose to court danger. He reached over and smoothed a lock of pale blond hair from her cheek. He felt her tears against his fingertips, the rose-petal softness of her skin.

  “What’s the matter with you?” she asked, her voice breaking. “Can’t you take a hint? Go back to your castle where you belong.”

  He held her while she cried, smoothing her hair with his palm, saying things in the language of his grandmother and her grandmother before her. He wondered what had brought him to this place, what primitive understanding had coursed through his veins and told him to find her. The randomness of it all. The blind amazing luck.

  Finally she stopped crying and pulled away from him. Her nose was red. Her eyes were puffy and swollen. Her hair needed combing. And it didn’t matter a damn. Somehow she was still beautiful.

  “Why did you come here?” she asked him.

  He forced a smile. “To phone for a taxi.”

  She didn’t smile back. “I mean, why did you come to Houston?”

  “I don’t know,” he said honestly. How could he tell her about the Glasgow pub and the aching loneliness he’d felt every day since? “I had no choice in the matter.”

  She nodded as if it somehow made sense. “This surprised me as much as it surprised you.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “I was taking the Pill,” she said. “You’re not supposed to get pregnant on the Pill.”

  “But it happened.”

  Her hands cupped her belly, and he saw the look of bewildered wonder in her eyes. “Yes,” she said quietly. “It did, didn’t it?”

  Another wave of bone-crushing fear gripped her, and she began to cry at the enormity of what had happened. She didn’t know the first thing about babies. How could she possibly have one of her own?

  And she didn’t have a husband. She knew husbands were optional these days, but she couldn’t help wanting to give her baby what she’d never known herself—two parents who not only loved her but lived with her on a daily basis. Not just when it was convenient or when work permitted or when the stars and the moon were in some kind of mystical alignment. But all the time. Every day of the week. Every month of the year.

  Crazy thoughts were popping into her mind at a dizzying rate. Her pregnancy would turn Wilde & Daughters Ltd. upside down. Martie would swoon with delight and turn Sam’s life into one long baby shower. Estelle would fuss over her like a mother hen, making sure Sam took her vitamins and exercised and ate all the right foods. She probably wouldn’t be able to draw in a single breath between now and her due date without someone staring over her shoulder and monitoring her oxygen intake.

  And what about her staff and her clients and the inordinate amount of business travel she usually undertook between now and early autumn? How much of it could she do? More important, how much of it did she want to do?

  The rumor mill was an amazing thing in the best of times. Sam’s pregnancy would have it grinding out gossip at a record pace. They’d find o
ut all about her and Duncan.

  “Maybe the test was wrong,” she said, grasping at straws. “That’s why they package two tests in the one box. Just in case you think you made a mistake.”

  He looked skeptical, to say the least. “Ninety-eight percent accuracy rate,” he said, reading the advertising copy on the box.

  “So’s the Pill,” she said, “and see what happened.”

  He saw. “Then take the test again, lass, and see.”

  She did, and the results were the same. A bouncing-baby plus sign winked up at them.

  “So now we know,” she said, tossing the whole mess into the garbage. “I’m definitely pregnant.” And not just pregnant, but terrified and drowning beneath the weight of it all. And she heard herself saying all of that and more to him. The words spilled from her mouth, and there wasn’t one damn thing she could do to stop the flood.

  Duncan listened as she spoke, and much of what she said touched a similar chord in him. The lonely child who feigned independence until that independence became a barrier between herself and the rest of the world. He understood it. He knew how it felt to watch your parents bounce from mate to mate, dead certain that the next love would be the last one. How it felt to want what every other child took for granted.

  “I want so much more for this baby,” she said. “I wish—” She stopped and shook her head. “It doesn’t matter what I wish. I’m pregnant and nothing can change that.”

  “Not every woman feels as you do,” he pointed out.

  “I know, but that’s not my choice.” She met his eyes. “Sorry, Duncan, but like it or not, you’re going to be a father.”

  “I like it.”

  She felt a shot of adrenaline race through her veins. “You like it?”

  “Very much.” More than she could possibly imagine.

  “We barely know each other. We’re strangers.”

  “Marriage will change that.”

  “Now wait a minute.” She stood up. “That’s the second time you’ve said that tonight. You can’t possibly mean it”

  “’Tis the perfect solution, Samantha.”

  “Marrying a total stranger is the perfect solution? You’ve lost your mind.”

  He stood up, as well, reclaiming the height advantage. Obviously he also knew something about strategic positioning. “Think about it,” he said. “We both know what it’s like to have parents whose main concern is the pursuit of romantic happiness.”

  “The children take a back seat,” Sam said. “But what does that have to do with our situation?”

  “We can see to it that doesn’t happen to our child, Samantha. A marriage based on a mutual goal rather than romantic love cannot fail.”

  “What mutual goal?” There was something wrong with his thesis, and she was determined to find it.

  “A family a child can depend on.”

  Oh, God. How could she argue that? It was the one thing she’d prayed for as a little girl. “That sounds wonderful, but I don’t see—”

  “I want my child to know his father,” he said bluntly. “The child will inherit Castle Glenraven one day and all that entails.”

  “And what if the child is a girl?” she asked.

  “That makes no difference to me, lassie. My child will inherit. A legal marriage between us would guarantee it.”

  “Are you suggesting I marry you and move to Scotland?”

  “Aye,” he said.

  “That’s crazy,” she said, not quite as forcefully as she might have liked. Think about it, Sam. An entire ocean between you and six months of nosy questions and unsolicited advice.

  Her expression softened, and he moved closer. “We’re not as backward as you might think, lass. We have fine doctors and modern hospitals, too.”

  “I never said you didn’t.” She paused as an idea— a crazy idea—began to take shape. “I see what you stand to gain by this marriage, but I’m not sure I see what I stand to gain.”

  He opened his mouth to speak, but she raised her hand to stop him.

  “What we need,” she said, “is some kind of agreement to spell out the terms.”

  He nodded. “I’m listening.”

  “The best arrangements are the ones that are beneficial to both parties.” She was on a roll. Making deals was what she did for a living. She could almost feel her confidence returning. “Let me see if I understand your terms. You want a legal marriage and you want the child to be born in Scotland.”

  “Aye,” he said, no longer certain where she was taking this.

  “I see where that benefits you, but I don’t see what it has to offer me.”

  “What is it you want?”

  “You,” she said, then realized how it sounded. “What I mean is, I want the same thing I wanted when I flew to Scotland to track you down. I want you to design for Wilde & Daughters.”

  “Lassie, I work on a grand scale. I can’t imagine—”

  “I know it will work,” she interrupted. She mentioned one of his earliest pieces. “Imagine it in silver, maybe on a marble pedestal. A limited edition, numbered—it’s a win-win proposition, Duncan. We get to be your exclusive dealer, and you get your name out there in front of millions of people who wouldn’t have known a thing about you otherwise.”

  “And for that you’ll marry me?”

  Put up or shut up time, Sammy.

  “Yes,” she said, then said it again in a louder, stronger voice. “If we can agree to terms, I’ll marry you.”

  Chapter 7

  It took all night. Duncan drank two pots of coffee while Samantha settled for milk. They argued the little points and negotiated the big ones and by the time the sun came up in the eastern sky, they had themselves a deal.

  Sam looked at the stack of papers on the kitchen table. “You drive a hard bargain.”

  Duncan polished off the last of the coffee and pushed the cup away from him. “Aye, but no harder than you, lassie.”

  She’d approached it the way she approached any other business deal because that was exactly what it was. They were both practical, down-to-earth individuals who understood the terms of the agreement they’d hammered out. First and foremost, was the happiness of their child. Without that, they had nothing. This child would have two hands-on parents. There was no arguing that point for either one of them.

  From there it had gotten interesting. Duncan refused to budge on the Scotland issue. Sam refused to budge on signing him up with Wilde & Daughters Ltd. under an exclusive contract.

  “I’m giving up my country,” she pointed out. “I don’t think what I’m asking of you comes close.”

  In the end he gave in. Oh, he muttered something dark about crass commercialization, but she ignored him. When the accolades started rolling in, he’d change his tune soon enough.

  And that left one final hurdle to be faced.

  “When will you tell your family?” Duncan asked as she fixed them each a bowl of cereal.

  “How does our silver wedding anniversary sound?” she asked, only half-kidding.

  “You can’t be serious, lassie.”

  “Lucky’s off on a fishing trip,” she said. “He’ll be out of touch for a few weeks.” Martie and Trask were on their honeymoon. Frankie was somewhere in Hawaii. And her mother Julia could be just about anywhere on the globe.

  “The thing to do is elope,” she said. “They’ll love that.”

  And if she eloped, she wouldn’t have to face the inevitable round of questions. Elopements were synonymous with love. Any suspicions her father might have about her hasty wedding would be allayed by his basically romantic nature. Presented with a fait accompli, there was nothing Lucky, or anyone else, could do but wish them luck.

  All in all, it was the only logical solution.

  * * *

  SAM MANAGED to grab her gynecologist’s second appointment of the morning, and by ten-thirty she and Duncan had confirmation of her pregnancy and of her general good health. The office manager tried to set up a series of prenata
l appointments, but Sam said she needed to consult her schedule before she could commit to specific dates. She could just imagine their surprise when she asked them to send her records to Scotland.

  “With any luck, it’ll be a Christmas baby,” Duncan said as they left the office.

  She met his eyes. “I know.” A silly smile spread across her face. “Can you believe it?”

  From there they went to meet with Sam’s lawyer, who had Duncan’s attorney on the speakerphone.

  Unfortunately neither man agreed with the wisdom of Sam and Duncan’s plan. Both men had endless reasons the marriage was destined for failure, but Sam and Duncan weren’t listening. The baby was all that was important. If they could create a stable family life for their child, all of this endless bickering would have been worth it.

  It took a few hours but at last a final draft of their prenuptial agreement was hammered out and presented to Sam and Duncan for their signatures.

  Sam found herself strangely depressed as she looked at the pages of legalese that represented the rest of her life. She wasn’t a romantic like her father. You wouldn’t think the flat statement of terms would hit her so hard but it did. She took the pen from her attorney and signed her name in quadruplicate and tried very hard not to think of her sister Martie’s radiant face as she took her wedding vows.

  Duncan felt detached from the proceedings. His first wedding had been born of hopes and dreams. It had ended up in despair. Maybe this way was better. Samantha saw their marriage as a business arrangement and nothing more. One look at her face, so cool and lovely and distant, and he knew he couldn’t delude himself into believing she felt anything at all for him. The glorious woman he’d made love to had been replaced by a stranger. He had traveled from Scotland to Texas to find her and now that he had, he wasn’t certain if life hadn’t once again managed to turn happiness into a cruel joke.

  * * *

  Las Vegas, that evening

  THE HAPPY CHAPEL of Wedded Bliss was located on the Strip, half a block from the Mirage Hotel. Sam and Duncan sat quietly in the waiting room while the dulcet tones of Wayne Newton singing “Hawaiian Wedding Song” filled the air.